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I'm trying to integrate Dropbox into my web application in the following way:

  1. Users can enter a Dropbox Share Link, i.e. a Dropbox folder that can be accessed by anyone, even without a dropbox account.

  2. My application then grabs the images from the folder and displays them to all users of my application.

Now as far as I can tell, the Dropbox API doesn't allow this without sending the user through a full-blown OAuth process. But since the shared link is public anyway, I don't need (and don't want) access to the users Dropbox account.

Is there a way to access a shared link in a programmatic way (without parsing the DOM or similar hacks)? Maybe there is a query parameter on the shared link to retrieve the contents as JSON? If it exists, I didn't find any docs about it.

Surely I'm not the first one to try this, so please share your solutions!

theDmi
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    Would you at least mind to tell me why this question deserves a downvote? Some SO users really have no manners... – theDmi Nov 02 '13 at 10:07
  • I'd guess it's because similar questions exist: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9764072/retrieve-contents-of-a-public-dropbox-folder but have an upvote on the house from me. Interested to know the answer to this myself as it goes. – Paul Collingwood Nov 02 '13 at 11:17
  • this question is better directed at dropbox support... https://www.dropbox.com/support/s/94/5200125/c/3 – Andy Jones Nov 02 '13 at 17:49

1 Answers1

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No, there's no programmatic way to list folder contents from a share link. If you have a share link for a specific file, then you can convert the domain from www.dropbox.com to dl.dropboxusercontent.com, but this trick doesn't work on folders.

user94559
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